Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Jiang Dong, who had always kept a low profile, suddenly broke character and took me on a very public date.

At a high-end restaurant, he approached me gracefully with a bouquet in hand.

His lazy gait and burning gaze drew the attention of many women, and some even took out their phones to snap photos.

He glanced at the people filming us and smirked. “Make sure I look good!”

With that, he leaned down and pressed a long, lingering kiss against my lips.

I felt something in my chest thumping, as if it were about to overflow.

Amidst the cheers and whistles, he asked the person for the photo and posted it to his social media feed for everyone to see.

I wondered if he was finally going to take this relationship-one that had started so absurdly-seriously.

Yet, after doing all that, he seemed distracted. Faced with my joy and nervous excitement, he gave me half-hearted, perfunctory responses, checking his phone every few minutes.

It wasn’t until he received a call from a contact labeled “A” that he suddenly straightened his back and cast a subtle glance out the window.

I told him to go ahead if he had work to attend to, but he hung up the phone and gave me a doting smile.

“Spending time with you is the most important thing today.”

As he spoke, he picked up a piece of food and intimately tried to feed me.

He probably didn’t even realize that what he had picked up was the decorative lettuce used for the plating.

After feeding me, he picked up a napkin to wipe my mouth, even though there was nothing on it.

A sense of foreboding rose within me.

Sure enough, after that series of intimate gestures, his phone began to ring incessantly.

Again and again.

Jiang Dong flashed a troubled smile and then pretended to be reluctant as he said something had come up at the company and he had to leave.

I smiled and told him to hurry back. He gave me a complicated look, hesitated for a few seconds, and then turned to leave with an unmistakable sense of urgency.

Driven by some inexplicable impulse, I followed him. Downstairs, not far away, stood a beautiful girl.

From her angle, she would have had a clear view of everything Jiang Dong and I had done in the restaurant.

A thought struck me, sending a shiver down my spine:

Could this high-profile date have been a performance staged specifically for this girl?

Jiang Dong had left at a run, but as he approached the girl named Lin Ge, he slowed down, putting on an air of impatience.

He told her he was on a date and demanded she say whatever she had to say quickly.

Lin Ge looked heartbroken as she asked him why he was degrading himself.

She said, “Even if I won’t agree to be your girlfriend, you can’t just find some random person to degrade yourself with. Is this how you treat the people who care about you?”

Jiang Dong fell silent for two seconds.

His silence felt like a sentence passed upon me-a confirmation that I was indeed just some “random person.”

After a long while, he spoke, sounding like he was lashing out in embarrassment.

“How do you know I couldn’t actually fall in love with her?”

Lin Ge gave a bitter smile. “Don’t you know what love feels like?”

With that, she grabbed Jiang Dong by the collar, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed him.

It was a deep, domineering kiss that left Jiang Dong frozen in place.

A moment later, Lin Ge pulled away. “A heart in turmoil-that is what attraction feels like.

“So, Jiang Dong, even if I haven’t agreed to be with you, you can’t just find some random person to degrade yourself with.”

In that moment, I hid behind a pillar and wept silently.

Only then did I realize that I wasn’t some twist of fate; I was just a tool he had picked up on a whim to provoke Lin Ge.

He hated Lin Ge’s indecisiveness, so he had found me at random.

He had chosen me at the bar, claiming that the colder a woman looked on the outside, the wilder she played in private.

He bet that I would definitely take a stray man home from the bar, and I really had picked him up…

Behind that pillar, like a voyeur, I watched them go from a heated argument to a passionate embrace.

They looked exactly like the leads of a tragic romance novel, while I was nothing more than cannon fodder.

A sharp, heart-wrenching pain shot through my chest, and I decided to break up with him.

Yet, I wasn’t sure if it was just an illusion, but the suffocating weight that Gu Ye had placed on my chest for the past three years seemed to have lessened significantly.

Perhaps that was what the doctor meant by “withdrawal.”

Jiang Dong didn’t come back until very late that night. When I checked his social media, the photo of us together was already gone.

We met again a few days later.

Jiang Dong arrived looking travel-worn. He hugged me as if we were reuniting after a long separation and leaned down to kiss me.

He closed his eyes, appearing to savor the moment.

I suspected he was trying to see if this kiss held the “turmoil” Lin Ge had spoken of.

I pushed him away. He looked away in a panic, his eyes filled with guilt and confusion.

Another wave of stinging pain washed over my heart.

But this time, I was certain: the suffocating feeling in my chest was indeed disappearing.

Since he was the one who used me first, it didn’t seem unfair for me to treat him as my withdrawal aid.